


weight of the world

by thirty2flavors



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Missing Scene, borderlands 3 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23937547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: “Hey, Atlas.” Sasha rests her hand on his chest, checking the Tin Man for a heart. “Sore shoulders?”
Relationships: Rhys/Sasha (Borderlands)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 53





	weight of the world

**Author's Note:**

> A couple friends recently finished Borderlands 3, which has it all fresh in my head again, and combined with quarantine and [this lovely Rhys/Sasha art](https://washingtubb.tumblr.com/post/616776382492639232/comfort-hugs) by @washingtubb, this was the result. Sometimes you just gotta write some sad present-tense one-shots, what can I say.

Rhys stares at the papers on his desk for so long the lines go blurry.

That’s especially worrisome when one of your eyes is robotic, so he accepts momentary defeat and sits back, scrubbing his face. Stars explode behind his eyelids, phantom battle plans and broken supply chains and ceded ground still swarming his mind. 

Every day, the dotted line marking Maliwan territory creeps forward, slowly rising floodwaters set to drown Meridia and all its people. All the resume padding he’s ever done has come back to suffocate him. The black hole of his ambition has finally sucked him into something he can’t bluff his way through. 

He has no clue how to win a war. Eventually someone’s going to notice.

The office is dark when he lifts his head. Refracted light filters through the vast aquariums, mesmerizing shadows dancing across the carpet. Silhouetted by one tank stands Sasha, watching the fish inside. 

When did she get here?

She shines like a mirage in the ephemeral glow of the water's reflection. Rhys is on his feet before he realizes it, guided to her by a magnetic pull that only grows stronger with time. He’s never known a more effective treatment for his work addiction than Sasha. 

“I think you’ve got some dead fish in here,” she’s saying, pleasantly oblivious to his line of thought. “I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to float like that. Shouldn’t you take them out? Or do the other ones eat them? Does that count as cannibalism? Or—”

Rhys drapes his arms over her shoulders and buries his face in her hair, a loose backwards hug.

“...Oh, hello.” She holds his arms in return. “Uh… everything all right?”

In lieu of an answer, he hugs her tighter. 

“Jeeze,” she jokes, but she squeezes the forearm of his that can feel it. “Didn’t realize you were so attached to the fish.”

Groaning his disagreement, he nuzzles deeper into her hair. Usually it smells like coconut, a relic of the fancy imported conditioner she made fun of him for buying and then claimed for herself. But tonight—

She twists away before he can pinpoint anything, facing him with kind eyes and a sad smile. 

“Hey, Atlas.” She rests her hand on his chest, checking the Tin Man for a heart. “Sore shoulders?”

He twines one of her dreadlocks around his finger. “Something like that.” 

“Tell me about it?” she asks. 

It’s hard to deny her. Prolonged exposure has granted him no immunity to Sasha’s beauty. But he’s done his best to keep the war away from her, even as its tendrils wind through every aspect of life in the city. Atlas may be his dream, but in many ways Promethea is hers: the new home she’d imagined from the streets of Hollow Point, a life marked by creature comforts and stability and frozen yogurt stands. Letting violence usurp all that feels like a personal failure. Probably because it is.

Besides, if Katagawa knew about her—

“It’s nothing.” Rhys shakes his head. “Just tired, that’s all.” 

It’s sort-of true: he’s not even sure what time it is, other than late—the sort of late that usually earns him a morning earful about the stupidity of sleeping at the office when there’s a lovely king size bed and a sexy half-dressed girlfriend waiting at home. 

But tonight she’s here too. 

“Poor baby,” she teases. “It’s past your bedtime.” But she softens as she watches him, and her hand moves to stroke the hint of gray beginning to surface by his temples. “You should get some rest.” 

“Mmmm,” is all he manages. Hypnotized by her touch, the rest of the office fades to white noise and what he wants narrows to a singular focus: Sasha, here, now. It’s enough. If he were a cat, he’d purr. “Right here’s good.”

“I’m serious.” She speaks as gently as she strokes his hair. “Even your moustache looks tired.”

He scoffs with the energy he can muster. “Uh, my moustache always looks great, and one day you’ll realize it.”

Sasha sighs, her signature combination of fondness and exasperation. “Okay, recognize that I’m only admitting this because you look so pathetic, but for what it’s worth… it is _kind of_ growing on me.”

A surprised laugh of delight bursts out of him. “See? I told you it would! It’s distinguished!”

She tries to pull a face, but her grin is unmistakable. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“It’s sexy. You love it.”

“I did _not_ say that.”

“You don’t need to. It’s written all over your face.” He leans in nose-to-nose with her and she giggles, squirming in a half-hearted attempt to get away. “You think it’s sexy and dashing.”

She twists her head at the last second and the kiss misfires, landing on her cheek instead. While he’s in the neighbourhood, he blows a raspberry into the crook of her neck, and Sasha laughs as she pushes his face away with her palm.

“I worry about you.” She says it like a joke, left-over laughter still on her face, but Rhys knows her well enough to see below the surface.

“Don’t,” he tells her seriously. “I’m fine. I’m—what’s that noise?”

Urgent beeping cuts through the peace of the office, and Rhys’ adrenaline skyrockets. It’s a warning, or alarm, or a bomb, or—

He jolts awake at his desk. When he lifts his head, a piece of paper comes with it, stuck to his face with an embarrassing amount of drool. He pries it off with a disgusted groan and rolls his stiff neck while the world comes slowly into focus around him, like a poor ECHOnet connection. Orange morning glare pours in through the office windows, reflecting off the fish tanks.

Reality perches on his shoulder once more, a vulture digging its talons in. Rhys slumps back in his chair. 

Better than a nightmare, he tells himself, even though right now it doesn’t feel like it. 

Like a magnetic force, the photo on his desk calls his attention. Sasha’s unseeing smile greets him from the picture frame, a right hook to his bruised heart. 

“I know, I know, don’t sleep at the office,” he tells her apologetically. “It was an accident.” 

Sort of. The king-size bed in the penthouse is too cold without her.

The beeping that woke him chimes again, and he’s simultaneously grateful for and resentful of the distraction from nostalgia. Opening the alert on his palm display, he narrows his eyes as a transmission filters through from… Watershed? 

That’s weird. Atlas lost Watershed weeks ago.

Right then. Back to business. He smooths back his hair and takes the call. 

“Hi there, you’ve reached Rhys Strongfork, CEO and wartime general of Atlas Corporation. Just a quick question: who the hell is this and how did you get on my secure line?”

**Author's Note:**

> So... where's Sasha? Substitute the explanation of your choice. I have my own ideas, but I wanted to leave it vague in this piece, both to keep it canon compliant, and in the event that once I finish Anachronism I decide to explore any of those ideas further. 
> 
> Come say hi on Tumblr: [@oodlyenough](https://oodlyenough.tumblr.com/tagged/oodlyenough%20i%20write%20fic)
> 
> Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought, sorry for taking cute art and making it sad, blame Gearbox, et cetera.


End file.
